Story Time
by Svendances
Summary: What if they're not all battle scars? What happens when Batman is cut too deep? Rating for the themes that are dealt with. ONESHOT


_This kind of just came to me while sitting in the car on my way to visit relatives yesterday. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance at a computer until very late, when my brain was a bit fried. So this morning when I woke up I fired up my laptop straight away and here is the result. There's a fair amount of angst, so be warned. It not something I right about often, but its always been a huge fascination for me. So, without further ado, I give you "Story Time." Please read and review._

**Story Time**

We sat at the edge of the water for a long time. Just sitting, not talking. Letting the waves lap at our toes and the fresh sea breath clear our heads of what ailed them; except it didn't quite work out. We'd been walking all morning and this was our first rest in five our. My thoughts had been almost pure while we walked; there had been no room for the impurities that plagued me usually. Now that we had stopped, however, it was all I could think about. I looked over at my companion and she was rubbing her legs, a pained expression on her face.

"What's wrong?" I asked her, looking for a distraction from my reverie.

"My legs hurt," she told me, kneading her thighs as she spoke. I forgot how she wasn't used to this kind of thing.

Her statement, much to my dismay, did little to sidetrack me. In fact, it only intensified the thoughts I had been having, giving them something to centre around. "Why?" I asked without thinking, "Did you try to cut them off?" Before either she could reply, or I could stop myself, I was continuing. "I did once. Then I couldn't walk for like three days." She looked at me with horror in her eyes, trying to work out if I was toying with her, of course I wasn't. These were my true feeling, the ones I had kept hidden even from my closest friend. "It gave me such pleasure, and then it caused me so much pain... It was a good pain though. The kind I sometimes crave." I had no idea why I was being so loose lipped all of a sudden. I had kept this to myself for twenty years, and now I was just blabbing it out simply because she told me her legs hurt. "I like that pain," I continued, avoiding her eye now because I knew I would see all the emotions I dreaded there. "It reminded me I was alive. I like to know I'm alive." At this seemingly ridiculous statement I let out a snort of laughter.

When I glanced at her she was staring at me in open mouthed disgust. That sent a pain through my chest, but it was unlike the pain that I was used to. "Sometimes it hurts too much, though," I continued relentlessly. I started it now, I may was well finish it. "And it makes me wish I was dead. That happened once too; I cut too deep and the pain lasted ages longer than usual. It still hurts sometimes, but I ignore it. It can't hurt me any more than I let it, my therapist said. So if I don't let it, it can't hurt me; can't hurt me one bit."

"Stop!" she exclaimed, shaking her head emphatically, but I couldn't, I had to tell someone.

"What? Stop what?" I asked. "Do you know that hurt?" I accused. "The one that won't leave you alone even in your sleep? The one that invades the depths of you mind until you're on the verge of told darkness and then divides you in two?"

"Yes," she said quietly, but I did not stop to examine it. This was about me.

"One half wanting to give into the pain. To sleep forever. To be free in another world. The other half wanting to live with the pain, but not admit that anything is wrong. your only relief the fresh wave of pain that comes every time the blade connects with your scarred flesh. Washing over you like the sea washes over the sand. Taking away part of you every time, until you're flat. The pain hurts so good that you wish it would never end; but it does, and then you suffer the bad pain. The pain that consumes you from the inside out." There were tears running steadily down her cheeks now and she was constantly shaking her head, trying to deny everything I said, if only to herself. Still, i had to continue. "So you have to play with the blade again.

"Its a vicious cycle, Stephanie. It just keeps spinning and spinning and spinning. Faster and Faster. And you find yourself stuck on the edge, like a vortex. A total outcast. And that's when you vomit up all your bad feelings in one foul attempt to take yourself from the world. You make it just past the final threshold, the point of no return, they call it, when something pulls you back. Jerking you,really. A great shock. You spasm and splutter. You can barely sustain yourself, but you're alive, and you spend the rest of your life imagining what was waiting for you beyond that door. Wanting to end the wait.

"There's no cure for the need you feel. It just keeps building, and building, and building and building and building, until one day you have a relapse. You return to your old ways. Yo pick up the blade again. And as the red liquid oozes from your flesh you think of how you've fooled them all. How they thought you'd overcome it. How you his it so well. But you were wrong. They had grown worried about the increasing amount of time you were spending on your own, and your obsession with 'dark themes'. They said nothing, hoping it was just a phase. Well they were right about that; it was just a phase. A phase that would end with the going down of the final sun. You're thrust into darkness, unable, or unwilling, to communicate in the usual methods. Nobody knows. Nobody knows anything."

I glanced at her at this point, making sure she was still listening. There's no telling her all this if she's not taking it in. "She's staring out at the ocean, glistening in the sun, avoiding my gaze. "Why?"

"Why? Why, you ask?" Now its my turn to shake m head. She's left it so wide open, so undefined. "Why do this to yourself? Why try to end it all, over and over? Why hide the truth? Why hurt yourself and at the same time those around you? Why do they persist in watching you? Why?"

She's still just staring off into the distance, as if that will protect her. Finally after several long moments her reply comes, "Just, why?"

I think about this for a moment, trying to get my thoughts straight in my head before i allow them out of my mouth. I don't know why i bothered, what I'd said so far was twisted. "The realisation comes slowly," I began. "Piece, by painstakingly small piece. They come together; fall into place. Slowly. It takes you months to come to any kind of conclusive decision. You look around for the first time; the world starts to brighten. The dark shrouds are lifting.

"Still as slow as ever you begin easing yourself back into a normal life; doing just like everyone else does. Following a timetable; scheduling study time and free time. But always ensuring that you're not alone, for fear of slipping into old habits; that dark chamber that had suppressed you for so long. Your world is a constant grey area for months on end, but eventually the clouds part and you see the sun for the first time in years. It feels like years anyway. You had become so accustomed to the solitude of the night that you forgot how warm and welcoming the world could be. You vow to yourself that you will never again walk through the valley in the shadow of death. Its not that easy to find a new wardrobe, however.

"Nobody notices any change in you until one day, as you sit in your usual spot, just staring into nothingness, having not broken routine for over three months. They sit next to you, tell you you look good in that shirt. You gaze at them, unseeingly for several seconds before moving your eyes to the shirt you had put on that morning. It was burnt orange, orange usually wasn't a colour for you, but there it was. You had simply picked it up and put it on without even looking at it. Your gaze returns to the girl sitting at your side and she smiles. There's a strange sensation in your cheeks, something is moving there that hasn't moved in over a year. The corners of your mouth twitch upwards and within moments you're smiling. She compliments your smile and asks your name. For a moment you're about to give her the number they had refered to you by in that dark chamber. Nobody had a name in that place, it was all coded by number. 'Carlos,' you finally manage, and her grin widens. 'I like that name,' she tells you, 'I'm Rachel.' You talk for a while longer but then the sky starts to darken. You realise you're back in your dark chamber; the drugs are wearing off. You realise what you've done, and start working extra hard to get that discharge. You throw out all your blades and give your all in everything they throw at you. You have to get out of there; away from the corruption. The place is no good, and is only making you worse. The only way to survive is if you're outside the confines of that dark chamber."

I fall silent, mulling over the events that came after that. "Finally you get out. You suffer through the years of grey. Week in week out, it was the same mind numbing routine, over and over and over. But it was safe, you were secure. There was nothing to disturb you. Then one day you get a call, from a girl. She needs your help, and, against your better judgement, you meet her. She's unlike anything you've ever encountered before. So unique, so out of the ordinary. She brings light back into your life, and it seems more permanent than the light that had come with Rachel. She makes you smile again, even has you laughing at times. All thoughts of the blade are banished from you mind, and you think you're finally going to recover. But you're wrong.

"You're not the only man in her life. She's with a guy that doesn't even appreciate her they he should, but she doesn't want to leave their history behind. They break up and make up about as much as they bathe and every time you're left in the dust. Unable to break through the barrier that has built itself between you. But you continue to help her every time she calls. Each time it makes another little part inside of you die and you fear that soon you will be entirely dead. Then the unspeakable happens, the other guy proposes. And what breaks you is the fact that she wants to say yes. You know it is none of your business, so you keep out of it, but it brings back old feeling, old craving, and you go searching for the blades you had once cherished so much."

We sit in silence once more. The waves now coming up to cover our ankles, and before she can say anything I stand. "Right," I say snapping out of my reverie, "Story time is over, time to get back to work." Stiffly she rises and follows, not saying a word. The tear tracks have dried on her face, but she has not wiped them away, she hasn't done anything, except keep walking.


End file.
